happy birfday tinner !!!!!

Today my big sis turns 35!! As far as I'm concerned, we are still in our 20's and will remain that way for another couple decades. Am I the only 32 year old out there that still feels like I'm 22? And it's not that I am afraid of getting older, it's just crazy how fast time really does fly. Last night my parents stayed the night at my place and we met up with Chris and Mike in West Seattle for some birthday celebration dinner at the Elliott Bay Brewery. Delicious. My sister is one of the most amazing persons I know (is that grammatically correct?). She is generous, honest, funny, crafty, intelligent, beautiful, curious, passionate, eclectic, loving, inspirational.......the list could go on and on and on.......what I'm trying to say is that in the world of sisters, she's the bees knees. Chris is an amazing knitter, she makes beautiful pieces of clothing that would knock your knitted socks off. She's my partner in crime for Pearl Jam shows, as well as tons of other rock shows. She's the mother to a nutty nine year old dog and 3 twelve year old cats. She's an awesome wife to Mike, they are the cheese to eachother's macaroni. We are alike in a lot of ways, and different in a few.......we both cry at the drop of a hat (but mostly those tears of joy and inspiration kind of cries), she likes CSI, I like Deadliest Catch. We both have subpar vision and dysfunctional thyroid glands. One of the coolest things about Chris is the fact that she has worked in the field of land conservation for 14 years. She can hold her own in conversations about hockey and football. She supports Mike's love of exploring the world of foods that will surely lead to quadruple bypasses (Luther burgers, poutine, Dave's Famous Feast). Like I said before, bees freaking knees folks!

Chris and Mike bought their first house this past summer. Their new back yard is filled with various fruit bearing foliage. This year Chris decided to make grape freezer jam with the ton of concord grapes they have sprouting in the yard. Last night she sent my mom and I home with a jar of the jam, it is absolutely delicious. Sign me up for a couple jars from next season's crop.

In true mom and dad fashion, my parents woke up this morning at 6am. No joke. Some of you may not think 6am is a big deal, but it is for me. Even when I have to work the morning shift at the old pill factory, I don't wake up til 7:30ish. Anyway, after rubbing the goo out of my eyes, I made blueberry scones for breakfast. Top those scones with some Brummel & Brown and some of my sister's homemade grape jam and you've got yourself the breakfast of champions.

Tomorrow Chris and I are heading to Bellingham for potato burritos and boutique shopping. Can't wait. Happy birthday Tin!!

Introducing......Milo!!!

As many of you know, I am a total animal person. Since moving in to a place where I can have a dog, I've been obsessively looking at petfinder.com. I've wanted to adopt my own dog for years, but have never lived in a place where anything larger than a cat was allowed. Growing up, one of the dogs we had was a basset hound, Rocket, she was such a friendly and sweet dog. I stumbled across some basset hounds on petfinder and fell in love with the breed all over again.

This past Sunday, Kim and I went to the Basset Rescue of Puget Sound's annual Howl-O-Ween party, it was a blast! People from all over the Northwest bring their bassets, some in costume, to cruise around and hang out with other bassets. Watching about 40+ bassets run around together was one of the cutest things I have seen in awhile. In all the chaos appeared a sweet gentleman named Milo, walking around slowing, dragging his little blue leash behind him. I immediately fell in love with this little man. After spending an hour and a half hanging out with him, petting him, and taking him for a walk, I knew that I wanted to give Milo a loving home to live out the rest of his life.

So here he is.....introducing.......Milo!!!
Milo is an older guy, probably 8 or 9. He's pretty slow moving, but manages to muster up a spring in his step when we go for walks. He has been sleeping quite a bit, he has adopted the couch as his main sleeping area. I've covered the entire couch with blankets in an attempt to maintain it's decency for at least a little while:) But how could you deny such a cute face!! See below........

Note the blanket covered couch and sleeping dog. Despite his age, he is manuevering up and down the stairs pretty well. He takes them pretty slow, probably because the first time he attempted to go down them he basically slid down the stairs. Ever since that maiden stair voyage he's been fine though:)

I'm trying to figure out a good Best In Show phrase to slide in to this post somewhere. Probably something by Catherine O'Hara's character, Cookie Googleman. It'll come to me, maybe my next Milo post.

Look at that paw! Don't you just want to squeeze it?!? He's such a dear little guy.

So far he and Frank have been tolerating eachother, no scuffles to speak of:) Frank has definitely asserted his dominance as the alpha male, but seems to have adjusted to having Milo around. Luckily Milo is way mellow and low key, if he was high energy and was in Frank's face all the time, Frank probably would have gotten in a good swipe or two. I don't think they'll be cleaning eachother's ears any time soon, but I'll keep you posted!

Let's wrap this up folks......

Alright, so this will be my last Pearl Jam blog post for awhile (I'm sure some of you are thanking your diety of choice right now.....). If you haven't checked out their new album, "Backspacer", I highly recommend it. I have a number of favorites....... Just Breathe, Amongst The Waves, Unthought Known, Supersonic, The End, and, of course, The Fixer.

This past tour I was on a huge Pearl Jam poster mission. In celebration of their awesome posters, I bought the book "Pearl Jam Vs. Ames Bros: 13 Years of Tour Posters"..... It's a 264 page book featuring over 200 posters. Love it. I remember getting my first Pearl Jam show posters a number of years ago when they played at Memorial Stadium in Seattle.
Here's a peak at a few posters of shows I didn't go to...... Love that Hawaii poster.

They also released bootleg cd's from their recent tour on their website. I decided to go for the the September 22, 2009 show because it was my favorite setlist of the three shows I was able to attend. I'm still bitter that I couldn't go to the show in Vancouver BC. This whole working thing is totally getting in the way of my Pearl Jam obsession. Next time I'm calling in and saying I have diarrhea. You really can't argue with diarrhea. Although I have such a hard time lying, I doubt I would be able to do it. I'd fear that I would actually get the worst case of diarrhea known to man because I faked diarrhea. Then I'd be known to myself and close friends as the girl who cried diarrhea.

Sweet Jesus.....check out the poster from the Vancouver BC show on 10/25/2009..... it is glorious. Love the color scheme. Luckily my awesome sister was able to score me one at the show. Did I mention she also had 5th row center seats? If I could have gone to the show, I, too, would have been sitting in the 5th row center, watching Eddie's sweat drip off his brow. Damn you adulthood! Damn you responsibility! Still bitter, still obviously so bitter.

The poster from the Vancouver, WA show was pretty sweet. We ended up getting to the show right when the doors opened at 5pm, in hopes that I would be blessed by the gods with a poster, and indeed, I was. There was a plethora of posters actually, I probably didn't need to get to the show 3 hours early, but better safe than sorry, ya know.

Wait a sec......how did that handsome boy get into the shot? He loves Pearl Jam as well. You know what else he loves? "Possibility" by Lykke Li, off The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Yeah, I downloaded it off iTunes. I'm not ashamed.

I'm kinda bummed the Pearl Jam shows are over:( But guess what? I've got Built to Spill on deck.....November 20th at the Showbox at the Market. Can't wait!!

Hells yeah!!!!

I'm on vacation nerds!! Ahhhhhhhh, you do not even understand how excited I am to have the next nine days off! The last month I have been running myself ragged at work. We upgraded our computer system a few weeks ago and since rolling out the new system I've felt like I pretty much live at work. Plus with flu shots, and the media putting the fear of god in all of us about this H1N1 schtuff, I am ready for a break from the working world. After leaving work today, I came home, cleaned up around the house a bit, then took the most relaxing shower ever. It was like I was washing away a month of tension and frustration.

Look what I found in my mailbox tonight? My first issue of People magazine! Yeah, I took the plunge into the world of celebrity gossip. Shameless. It's one of my guilty pleasures, and I have never subscribed to the magazine. I get the occassional glimpse in the waiting room at the dentist's office, the check out line at the grocery store, or The Hayes' bathroom. I figured why the heck not, right? Now I'll get this tasty treat on a weekly basis. Sure I could be reading more intelligent literature, but why would I want to do that when I can read about Nicole Richie and Joel Madden's new baby Sparrow James Midnight Madden? I love my vacation already!
Some other things I have planned for the next nine days:
1. Resting. I've been going a mile a minute the last few weeks and I need to take a break to breathe. Like one of those huge cleansing breaths that makes you feel like you've just fully emptied your lungs and filled them up again. Restful sleep. No more dreams about processing prescriptions and huge flu shot needles. No joke, a few nights ago I had a dream about giving people flu shots with enormous needles. I wonder what Freud would have to say about that?
2. Taking care of myself. I haven't gone for a walk in weeks. I need to explore my new neighborhood on foot. And I'm looking forward to it.
3. Cooking. This could also fall under the category of taking care of myself. I haven't cooked much for myself over the past year, and I'm really excited about getting back in to a cooking routine. I'm busting out the recipe books this week and getting all Julia Child up in this bee-yatch. If anyone has any recipes they'd like to share, email them my way! I'm thinking a few crockpot recipes are in order.
4. Turning off the television and turning up the music. This one is pretty self explanatory. Last week I saw Sunny Day Real Estate at the Paramount and it was awesome. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with their albums this week, as well as the albums of Built to Spill. Just got my ticket in the mail for the BTS show at the Showbox on November 20th. Super stoked!!
5. Making my house a home. I want to put a little more of my personality in to my new digs. Check out the new table I bought a few months ago.......
It is the Lugano dining set from World Market. I've had my eye on this set for years. I love it, and I finally live in a house where I have room for it. Can't wait to have some people over for dinner! Until then, I will enjoy eating my breakfast at the table in the mornings. Frank likes licking Greek Gods yogurt off my finger. We love that stuff. Honey flavor is the best.
5. Spending time with friends and family. My parents are coming in to town for a visit on Wednesday. Bailey will be in attendance, which should prove interesting for Frank. My big sis turns 35 this week, so Wednesday night we'll be celebrating her birth with the 'rents. Tinny is the big 3-5!! Can't believe it. Plans with friends so far: Howl-O-Ween party with Kim on Sunday then punkin carving with Kim and Casey Sunday night, hangin' with Bren on Monday, lunch with Nic sometime during the week, pedicure with Gina Saturday morning, and Kyle's Halloween party Saturday night. It's fixin' to be a pretty sweet week.
6. Blogging. I'm not going to make any promises, because obviously I've failed every blogging goal I have set for myself over the past year. I think my goal at the beginning of 2009 was 2 blog posts a week? That didn't happen. Well, this week I'd like to crank out some bloggage. Here's to a fruitful blog week.
7. Create the most kick ass Halloween costume of my life so far. I think I can accomplish this. I've been cultivating an idea over the past few weeks. And I'm fairly certain I figured out how I'm going to execute it while I was listening to the sweet indie sounds of Sunny Day last Friday night. I don't want to give it away, but I'll give you a hint. Two words: oh and yeah.

So, there you have it, my plans for my stay-cation thus far. I'm sure these plans will grow and change over the course of the week, stay tuned.